High-speed Rail Connection Research Articles

Information effects of high-speed rail: Evidence from patent citations in China

Using high-speed rail (HSR) connection information and patent citation data, we find robust patterns linking HSR connection with increased patent citations between Chinese cities. Furthermore, HSR connection is shown to slow down the decay in knowledge diffusion over distance. The main results are not only robust to alternative choices of city sample, HSR connection measure, citation measure, and citation windows, as well as other tests, but also remain when the endogeneity concern is addressed. And evidence has been found that academic conferences and the establishment of non-local subsidiaries serve as mechanisms through which HSR connection affects cross-regional knowledge spillovers. The heterogeneity effects of HSR connection are also in line with expectations, where cities with larger innovation capacity gaps, industries with higher delivery costs and faster technological upgrading, and patents with more technological innovation content experience greater impacts of HSR connection. These findings thus provide consistent support for the beneficial effects of transportation infrastructure upgrading on knowledge transfer and technological innovation.

High-Speed Rail and Energy Productivity: Evidence from China

Using the difference-in-differences method combined with the propensity score matching, this study identifies the causal relationship between high-speed rail (HSR) and energy productivity in China. Furthermore, we investigate the mechanism through which HSR affects energy productivity, as well as the heterogeneity of the impact across quantiles and distances. The results show that HSR connection contributes to the improvement of energy productivity. This finding is consolidated after a potential endogeneity problem is addressed using the instrumental variable method and a variety of potential confounders are controlled through a series of robustness checks. On average, the marginal impact of HSR on energy productivity is approximately 9%. Moreover, HSR connection cannot be completely substituted by traditional railway and aviation in improving energy productivity. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that the positive energy productivity effect of HSR gradually decreases with an increasing distance to the nearest HSR station. In addition, HSR network accessibility has a significant positive effect on energy productivity, while technological innovation mediates the relationship between HSR development and energy productivity. We propose that to achieve the long-term improvement of energy productivity, policymakers should comprehensively consider both transit-oriented development and ecology-oriented development modes.

Is high-speed rail a sustainable mobility option? A life-cycle assessment of the Basque Y project in Spain

The Basque Y High Speed Rail connection between Madrid and the Basque Autonomous Community is, quite exceptionally, a mixed freight and passengers HSR line, that has been presented as a fundamental step towards a more sustainable mobility. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to assess the environmental performance of the line throughout its lifetime, based on the latest data available, including both construction and maintenance burdens. Results show that this new corridor is not justified in terms of reducing emissions and energy consumption, mainly due to its low transport density. It also has a negligible impact on Spanish current low rail freight traffic. We conclude, therefore, that Spain needs to reconsider its AVE network expansion if aiming at increasing rail's modal share and meeting the emissions targets set by the EU. From a policy perspective, many information inconsistencies have been found regarding the demand projections of freight transport, which cast serious doubt about the decision-making process behind Trans-European transport projects.

The spatial impact of high-speed rail on firm performance: The role of proximity to urban cores

This paper examines the spatial impact of high-speed rail (HSR) connection on firm performance in China at the micro level using a unique administrative dataset. Connected firms benefit from agglomeration economies and improved market access, but the redistribution of production inputs towards urban cores may have a negative impact on firms in peripheral regions. If these opposing forces are both subject to spatial decay but at different rates, proximity to urban cores could play a crucial role in determining the overall effects of HSR connection on firms. We find that connected firms located farther from urban cores benefit the most, indicating a steeper spatial decay in the redistribution effect relative to the agglomeration effect. This research enhances our understanding of the micro-level spatial impact of HSR on regional development.

Information search costs and trade credit: evidence from high-speed rail connections

We investigate the impact of information search costs on firms’ access to trade credit used as a major source of interfirm financing. Using the openings of high-speed rails (HSR) in China as exogenous shocks, we find that firms located in cities with HSR connections receive more trade credit from their suppliers. Further analyses show that the HSR effect on trade credit concentrates among customers with poor information transparency and that HSR openings improve the customers’ information environment, suggesting that a decline in information search costs promotes supplier financing. Our finding reveals a positive externality of HSR construction on interfirm financing.

High-speed rail network and regional convergence/divergence in industrial structure

Despite the large body of literature on the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional economic development, less is known about how it acts as inter-regional linkages. We seek to enrich the literature by examining if HSR can support inter-regional learning and enable lagging regions to learn from advanced ones. Another feature that distinguishes our study from others is its focus on regional convergence/divergence in industrial structure, while most pay attention to that in GDP/incomes. We investigate the impact of HSR connection on the similarity of regional industrial structures during 2008–2015 in China using the multi-stage difference-in-differences and propensity score matching methods. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between HSR connection and the similarity of a pair of cities’ industrial structures. The influence of HSR connection varies across time, and is contingent on the features of regions and industries. Econometric results show that it takes time for HSR connections to have some effects. Such effects also fade in the long run. Furthermore, HSR development in China has facilitated knowledge flows from developed, coastal regions to lagging, inland regions and then spread among the latter, especially in the case of high-complexity industries. Our research thus provides a more nuanced perspective to better understand the relationship between transport infrastructure and regional convergence/divergence.

Diversification or specialization: Measuring the impact of high-speed rail connection on technological diversity in China

Technological diversification and specialization have important roles in explaining volatility, innovation, income inequality, exports, and related concerns; however, the relationships between transportation improvement and technological diversification and specialization remains unexplored. Using Chinese city-level panel data, we investigate the impact of China's high-speed rail (HSR) connection on technological diversity using the difference-in-differences method and instrumental variable regressions. The results demonstrate that HSR connection leads to reductions in technological diversity, particularly in core cities, cities along the four longest HSR lines, and cities that were initially diversified. The findings indicate that HSR connection is conducive to technological specialization rather than diversification, offering new insights for understanding the relationship between transportation improvement and innovation and determining that HSR connection spurs intra-industry knowledge spillovers more than inter-industry knowledge spillovers.

Chinese agriculture in the age of high‐speed rail: Effects on agricultural value added and food output

AbstractAlthough evidence shows that roads and conventional railways promote rural development, little is known about the impact of high‐speed rail (HSR) on agricultural output. To bridge this gap, this study explores how the establishment of HSR affects agricultural production. The causal effect was identified by constructing panel data mainly for Chinese counties between 2001 and 2017 using a difference‐in‐differences (DID) framework. The empirical results, after controlling for county‐specific linear trends, reveal that an HSR connection contributes to increasing agricultural value added and food output by approximately 4% and 6%, respectively. Moreover, the effects are mainly driven by increased productivity and adjustments to grain production and economic crops rather than the increased use of observed inputs. These results provide fresh evidence on the effect of transportation improvements on agricultural economies and highlight the need to control nonparallel trends when using the DID method to disentangle the effect. [EconLit Citations: O18, Q13, L92].

Travel on the road: does China's high-speed rail promote local tourism?

Following a Chinese saying: To be rich, roads first, high-speed rail (HSR) opening and station construction are indispensable for economic developing. Probing the nexus between HSR, as a vital part of modern transportation system, and local tourism development provides a scan for reviving tourism and gaining low-carbon transition after COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on prefecture-level panel data, this study takes difference-in-difference and instrument variable methods to detect the overall and heterogeneous effects of HSR connection on cities’ tourism development. The results showed that HSR connection had an overall positive effect on cities’ domestic tourist arrivals. The heterogeneity of the effect from HSR to tourism development appears to be that central and western cities, non-resource-based cities, and small cities benefited more from the opening of HSR. From a dynamic perspective, HSR connection promoted local tourism development in the 0 and 1 year of HSR opening but failed to show a positive effect in the long term. Hence, the study proposed some adjustments for evaluating the efficiency of HSR with consideration for the tourism effect, redesigning the system of HSR with consideration for local heterogeneity, and optimizing the HSR environment. These measures can optimize China’s HSR management and the design of HSR systems.

Access to high-speed rail and land prices in China's peripheral regions

This paper examines how transport access affects the land values in peripheral regions, by exploiting the recent expansion of China's high-speed rail (HSR) network. Based on a nation-wide land transaction dataset and applying a DID-hedonic approach, we find that industrial parcels in distant peripheries benefit from the HSR-induced growth spillover, while residential parcels in the immediate vicinity of a high-tier core experience larger price appreciation after HSR connection. Based on comprehensive firm-level datasets, additional tests of the HSR impact on the location choice and performance of firms in peripheral regions show much similar patterns. These findings add to the understanding of the impact of HSR on the spatial distribution of economic activity. By accelerating the growth spillovers from the highly agglomerated urban core to remote peripheries, transport access can play an essential role in reducing spatial inequality. By contrast, peripheries neighboring highly agglomerated urban cores may benefit more from the relocation of residents from urban core, at the expense of a shrinking manufacturing sector due to agglomeration shadow effect.

Interregional infrastructure, competition for capital, and local public expenditure policies: Evidence from China's high‐speed rail network

AbstractInterregional infrastructure promotes market integration and enhances the mobility of capital, thereby intensifying fiscal competition among local governments. Exploiting the expansion of China's high‐speed rail (HSR) network as plausibly exogenous shocks, this study examines how Interregional infrastructure affects the fiscal competition among local governments. We find that after connecting with the HSR network, city governments tend to dedicate a lower proportion of public spending to consumption goods, which benefit immobile households, and invest more in productive inputs, which attract mobile firms. We also find that the negative effect of HSR connection on the proportion of consumption goods is more pronounced in peripheral cities than core cities because periphery cities face a larger increase in capital mobility due to the core–periphery effects of trade integration induced by HSR. Our findings indicate that the behavioural responses of local governments should be accounted for when assessing the social welfare of interregional infrastructure.

World Heritage Site inscription and city tourism attractiveness on national holidays: new evidence with migration big data from China

ABSTRACT World Heritage Site (WHS) inscription has been considered as a certification of tourism quality since it is designated to properties with outstanding universal value. While it is hypothesised that the title can raise tourism attractiveness through signalling tourism quality, empirical evidence remains highly mixed. This paper tries to identify the causal effect by using unique daily city-pair tourist flow intensities from Tencent migration big data on two Chinese national holidays between 2015 and 2019 and constructing multi-dimensional fixed effects panel data models. We find that the WHS inscription does raise city tourism attractiveness. One WHS increases tourist inflow intensity by at least 6.7% up to around 10%. The tourism-enhancing effect is consistent under many robustness checks and displays some notable heterogeneity effects in terms of holiday types, days within each holiday and high-speed rail connections. These results suggest that WHS inscription could be a valid tourism quality signal used by tourism administrations to enhance city tourism attractiveness.

High-speed rail and urban innovation: based on the perspective of labor mobility

High-speed rail (HSR) can enhance the inter-regional flow of labor factors, which is conducive to promoting knowledge exchange and the formation of innovation. Using prefecture-level data and the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), and adopting a difference-in-differences model, we explore the effect of HSR connection on urban innovation as well as its mechanisms. The results indicate that compared with non-HSR cities, the innovation in connected cities significantly improves after HSR connection. The results remain robust after using an instrumental variable to deal with the possible endogeneity problem caused by the non-random placement of the HSR routes. Further investigations on the mechanisms show that one reason for the innovation improvement in HSR cities is the flow of talents from non-HSR cities to connected ones. The other reason for this increase is that HSR reinforces the interaction of talents among cities along the HSR routes.

How China's high-speed rail promote local economy: New evidence from county-level panel data

This study uses Chinese county-level panel data to determine the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) connection on local economic growth. We find that HSR connection promotes economic growth, and this effect becomes increasingly obvious over the HSR operation time. Besides, HSR connection may affect the relationship between local and neighboring areas. When local and neighboring areas are HSR-connected, a cooperative relationship occurs at the average level of industry structures. When local areas are HSR-unconnected but neighboring areas are HSR-connected, a certain degree of spillover effect occurs rather than a siphon effect. Moreover, the increase of HSR connectivity not only optimizes the allocation of production factors within urban agglomerations but also generally promotes convergence of regional economies.

The territorial impact of high-speed rail on urban land development

High-speed rail (HSR) has been regarded as one of the key solutions to reduce regional disparities and promote cohesion. Meanwhile, uneven distribution of HSR service is thought to precipitate new disparities to the territory, e.g. places with HSR vs without HSR connection, central vs periphery areas along HSR corridors etc. Taking a combined social and spatial perspective, this paper attempts to discuss on the cohesion implications of HSR by analyzing land development impact at various territorial levels. We find: (1) at regional level, short distance HSR corridors are playing a pivotal role in metropolitan formation and regional cohesion; (2) at city level, there is a substantial possibility that HSR causes urban expansion and polycentricity; (3) at station-area level, HSR may threaten micro-level spatial cohesion. Eventually, directions for further research, and policy implications for (inter)national planners, local authorities, and private investors are proposed.

Intercity innovation collaboration and the role of high-speed rail connections: evidence from Chinese co-patent data

ABSTRACT This study explores the extent to which changes in transport infrastructure counterbalance pre-existing geographical friction and foster innovation collaboration, using the Chinese high-speed rail (HSR) construction as a quasi-natural experiment. Using a comprehensive dataset of city-pair co-patents from 2005 to 2018, we show that HSR connections significantly increase intercity co-patents, patent quality and collaborative partnerships, and such effects are strongest for city-pairs within 250 km and decrease for longer distances. Moreover, the HSR effect is stronger for cities in similar institutional settings, indicating a negative moderating effect of institutional distance. Various robustness methods are used to confirm the validity of our findings.

Booming with Speed: High-Speed Rail and Regional Green Innovation

Exploiting China’s high-speed rail (HSR) as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine the relationship between the HSR connection and green innovation. The opening of HSR can promote green innovation by facilitating the flow of innovation factors. Using the multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) model, we find that the regional green innovation performance significantly becomes better following the opening of HSR in the local city. Moreover, in examining the specific mechanisms at work, we find evidence that HSR stimulates green patents through increased labor mobility and research capital mobility. Further analyses show that the facilitating effect of HSR is heterogeneous among cities. Our paper sheds new light on the effects of HSR on social welfare in the case of sustainable economy.

The effect of HSR connection on urban cluster centrality: evidence from China

ABSTRACT In a time varying difference-in-differences setting, we empirically test the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) connections on urban clusters in China. We construct an urban cluster centrality index to reflect changes in the economic positions of counties in clusters. The results show the following: (1) The HSR connection has a positive effect on urban cluster centrality, especially for counties with higher centrality. (2) The heterogeneity effect indicates that western counties centrality has greatly increased their urban cluster centrality compared to eastern areas. (3) Mechanism estimation indicates that the different result to western and eastern counties is due to the high skill labour transfer from eastern to western counties.

Evaluation and optimization analysis of high-speed rail network structure in Northeast China under the background of northeast revitalization

The construction of high-speed rail (HSR) network has promoted the social-economic ties of cities, accelerated the compression of time and space, and changed the pattern of regional development. In this paper, with the adoption of the operation frequency data of HSR from 12306 website, and based on the HSR connection strength model and social network analysis model, as well as according to the HSR connection strength, HSR network density, centrality, agglomeration subgroup, and other indicators, we analyzed the characteristics of HSR network structure in Northeast China. Results show that the number of HSR cities in Northeast China is small, cities in HSR network generally exhibit weak connectivity, and the existence of HSR network marginalizes cities such as Ulanhot, Baicheng, and Songyuan, which significantly reduce the overall network connectivity of Northeast China. The overall centrality of HSR network in Northeast China is characterized by “one axis, four edges”; specifically, the one axis is located in Harbin-Dalian transportation line and the four edges are located on both sides of the main axis of Harbin-Dalian transportation line. Eight agglomeration subgroups (four double city subgroups and four multi city subgroups) have formed in Northeast China. The core status of Shenyang in HSR network is improved significantly, and “one axis and two wings” HSR network in Liaoning Province is improved significantly. With the gradual expansion of Chaoyang-Fuxin, Dandong-Benxi, and Jilin-Yanji branch networks, the “point axis” HSR network mode in Northeast China has gradually developed and matured. In the future, it is recommended to rely on eight agglomerating subgroups to encrypt HSR network structure, create secondary node central cities, and gradually build a new pattern of opening up in Northeast China.

High-speed rail, firm agglomeration, and PM2.5: Evidence from China

• The aggregate effect of HSR on local air quality in China was investigated. • The impact of HSR on air quality through firm location was empirically measured. • Annual PM2.5 concentration declines by about 2.8% after a county was connected to HSR. • The elasticity of PM2.5 concentrations to the number of firms is about 0.25. • HSR can be used as an instrumental variable to explore the influence channels of air pollution. Over the past decade, China has built the most extensive high-speed rail (HSR) network in the world. This study estimated the effect of HSR connectivity on the local air quality in China between 2004 and 2016. Through difference-in-differences estimation, we found that on average, the concentration of particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 μm (PM2.5) declined by 2.8% after a county had been connected to the HSR network. As industrial activities are the highest source of pollution, HSRs can affect local PM2.5 concentrations by changing firm and/or industrial agglomeration patterns. We further explored this channel by using HSR connectivity as an instrumental variable, and found that PM2.5 concentrations will decline by 2.74% on average due to the migration of polluting firms induced by HSR connections. The results indicate that the response of firms to HSR is important in understanding the spatial distribution of air pollution in China.